I Still Wuv You Beary Much
by Kerstae
Summary: Prequel to my story Induratize Thyself Logan Echolls. Logan POV vs Veronica POV after Season 2, episode 2 where he catches Veronica leaving Duncan's hotel room the night after the bus crash.
1. Chapter 1

Logan Echolls was doing his best not to allow the sob building in his throat to escape as he waited by the elevator in the Neptune Grand Hotel, he could still taste Kendall Casablanca's lipstick and her perfume was still clinging to his skin, the sex had been great, a marathon he should have been proud of. Tempting an experienced woman that hot away from her husband should have given him a sense of pride that he had managed to have her panting and writhing under him like he did. But as he was leaving the suite and she was putting her dress back on before going back to the banquet her husband had dragged her to, he had found Veronica Mars standing in the hallway outside his former best friends Duncan Kanes penthouse apartment suite, her lips swollen from her new boyfriends kisses, her beautiful golden hair a little dishevelled from having been in bed, that unmistakeable post sex flush to her cheeks. That easily accessible pink blouse on… he could have just opened the buttons and cupped her breasts in his hands…. Her eyes were wide and a little embarrassed.

Veronica Mars… the girl who had torn his heart out just a few months ago. The girl who haunted his dreams and occupied almost every other thought in his head. Wondering what she had been doing, what she was thinking, if she thought about him… what he could possibly do to make up for the way he had screwed up this summer? If it was still too late to get her to forgive him… if she had ever loved him the way he had fallen for her. If she could see right through his bitterness? And if she could… why hadn't she forgiven him yet?

Isn't that all anyone wanted? Someone who would choose them? Over everyone else... under any circumstances. He knew she loved people like that…she had chosen her dad over all of Neptune. Why wouldn't she choose him? Be with him? Love Him?

He had found out from Dick Casablanca's that she had began to date Duncan Kane when he had been at the clambake and he had gotten so wasted he had propositioned Kendall Casablanca's. His cycle of self-destruction was fully underway after that. He knew how much Veronica had loved Duncan, how she had pined for him during most of last year… she had kept their relationship secret to protect Duncan's feelings… but she hadn't shown any of that consideration to him at all. It had been weeks.. only a few weeks since they had split up and he had fought the urge every day to go to her work, or bother her… she had told him that when things got out of control for her, she had needed to be alone. So he had left her alone… and she had gotten back together with Duncan instead. Didn't she know he was still in love with her?

 _"Are you breaking up with me?"_

 _"I can't stay with you…"_

She had been the only good thing left in his life after this hellish year… the only glimpse of sunlight… and she had thrown him away like he meant nothing to her… like after everything they had been through together had meant nothing at all… that he was just a Duncan substitute. She had taken his heart and ripped it out… and then she had taken his best friend too, so he had no refuge this time. Duncan and him had been friends since kindergarten… and she come between them both.

She had been with Duncan tonight… they were having sex now… he felt the air in the hallway being pulled from him as he pleaded for the elevator to hurry up and ascend to his floor. Those sounds he had heard coming from the room next door that had made him smile at first while he had been waiting for Kendall to sneak away and join him. He had known that Duncan had a suite here… he hadn't known which one though… now he knew what her voice sounded like when she cried out in pleasure….. jealousy tore through him. Those sounds should only have been for him… now he would never get them out of his head… He didn't want her to have the satisfaction of seeing him crying over her. He squeezed one hand over his other fist and pushed down until it hurt and bit his lip. She had looked so shocked to see him there, a little angry even.

Logan had never been so grateful for the skills his father had instilled in him, the ability to act like a complete jackass and say exactly the right thing to strip your opponent down to their core while hiding the agony he was truly feeling.

"FYI if the cuddling was the best part… he didn't do it right" he had snarked only moments ago.

His voice had sounded so cavalier but really as soon as he had gotten around the corner from her, he was trying to fight the tears away… but the millions of sickening images of the two of them together began to flood his thoughts. He had thought watching them holding hands and kissing at lunch had been bad enough… he had been able to convince himself that it didn't matter because, he knew how chaste Veronica could be… he knew that their relationship was just restarting and it would probably take time to reach this point… he had hoped they would realise that they were terrible for each other or she would come to her senses and realise that Duncan loved the old Veronica… the one she had been before Lilly had died. That he could have a chance to win her back… he had just been waiting for it to fizzle out. Instead… she looked happier and it broke him.

Logan pushed the button again, he could hear the door in the hallway opening, Kendall had been planning to shower so it could only be Duncan.

 _Please please hurry up…._ He didn't want to have to share an elevator with her. Normally he waited around a moment longer than he had to in the corridor at school to catch glimpses of her. She hadn't even looked over her shoulder at him, she hadn't even said a word.

There were places in the school he couldn't even go to anymore, the girls bathroom had never held such torment for him before. He knew where she kept the out of order sign… he had toyed with the idea during those first few weeks before school before Dick had told him about her Duncan of putting the Out of Order sign folded in her locker so she would know he wanted to talk to her. He had driven an hour out to San Diego to go find a mall that had one of those little I Wuv You Beary Much teddy bears to put in her car. It was still in his bedroom, he would stare at it when he couldn't sleep. He had been hatching all the little ideas before her birthday of how to win her back… then Duncan had swooped in like the fricking Calvary and stolen her before he got the chance.

"Hey why didn't you wake me?" Duncan's voice asked sleepily and he heard Veronica's voice smiling as she give him some quip about having to get home before her dad activated the homing device in her molar. It was then the first tear did escape… what hell was this? Was there no escaping this hurt?

She was everywhere, he couldn't go anywhere without hearing her name. Those rumours he had started last year had seemed like a good way to get back at the girl who had betrayed their friendship. Now they were a constant reminder… her uncovering of Lilly Kanes killer, and her fathers book had given her a kind of heroine status at school. The girl who took down Aaron Echolls, now it meant she was always being brought up in conversation at partys… how great it was that she and Duncan could finally find some happiness after everything they had been through… wasn't it so great that they were back together like a fairy tale? The girls at his school had been driving him crazy with it, its why he hadn't been bothered in dating any of them. Kendall didn't care about anything other than helping him forget who he was for a few hours.

He heard her say good bye to Duncan and he darted for the stairwell, getting in through the doorway just before she turned the corner. He could see her through the mirrored glass and he couldn't tare his eyes away, she tucked her hair behind her ear and wore a content happy smile on her face and pressed the button for the ground floor. It was when she was gone that the first sob wrecked through his shoulders and he pounded his fist into the back of the door.

She wasn't even sorry… she treated him with such disdain. He saw this very clearly for what it was… three people who cared about each other, stuck in a very horrible situation. He loved them both, he wanted them to be happy… part of him really did. Being with Veronica was the first time Duncan had really smiled since Lilly… since his father had… but was he okay with it? NO. Because at they still got to be happy, they got to be together and Logan.. he got to be tormented. He was really trying, he was. When she began dating him after that night on the bridge… he had felt like he could hope again. That there had been a purpose to the nightmare his life had become.

He would give anything for the woman he had spent tonight with to have been Veronica.. to get the chance to hold her again. She was everything he wanted. Maybe it was time he started to realize… that he wasn't going to find a way back.

He was dying inside.

Maybe he didn't deserve one.

"Hi this is Logan with todays inspirational message" he sobbed as he dialled his voicemail.

"Nothing hurts as much as watching the one you love move on with their life like you never existed -M Sosa." He said drunkenly he sat at the bar in the Neptune Grand Hotel bar.

He mused at the fake ID in his hand… Veronica had made this for him.

Yep… even now he still couldn't escape her memory.

 _You don't know real pain, until you watch the one you love, love someone else._


	2. Chapter 2

Veronica Mars carefully uncurled herself from Duncan Kane her boyfriend, and left him sleeping on the bed while she gathered up her things, it was late and her father would be looking for her soon. Truthfully, she had been a little disappointed by their night together… things with Duncan always sounded better in her head than they had in execution. They may not have been half-siblings but kissing him now felt like she might as well have been dating her brother for all the attraction she felt to him now.

She felt guilty for feeling this way. Duncan Kane had always been a part of the fairy tale dream version of her life she had always convinced herself that she had wanted. He was perfect. He cared about her. He loved her. But Veronica's life was far from a fairy tale… how did you go back to enjoying a dream life when you had survived being awake in your nightmares with the monsters?

Even curled up in his strong arms she hadn't been able to shake the nightmare of being locked in that metal box with the flames engulfing the outside, the trapped panic and Aaron Echolls voice screaming at her that this wasn't going to end well. They came almost every night and she didn't want to admit to herself that the only place they didn't find her were when she had been cuddled beside a very similar man with the same shade but kinder brown eyes. _Logan…_

Was this feeling ever going to go away?

She was drawn to him in a way that was primal.. magnetic.. he was like the air she needed to breathe and part of her was suffocating without him.

She was different now, harder, angrier.. and she knew it.

She just wanted to try to reclaim a piece of her soul after her vengeance had been achieved. To cling to something normal, was that so wrong? She had spent a year hunting for her best friends killer… being tormented at school… being at war with all of Neptune with just her father at her side. Now they had been vindicated, but the crazy hadn't stopped. The deaths surrounding her life, hadn't stopped. Her mind flashed back to those students who had been on her bus, and to Meg Manning, her friend currently clinging for survival on a ventilator. Mr Clemmons was right… trouble followed her around.

The bus crash hadn't been an accident… nothing happens by chance, not in Neptune. She watch Duncan sleeping as she picked up her boots and wished silently that she could be the sort of person that this was enough for.. that she had it in her to just let her suspicions go… but she wasn't. And there was that other niggling case that had been driving her insane for the last few months. The stabbing of Felix Toomes. Logan had told her he didn't remember everything from that night on the bridge, and it didn't matter how many times she went through the police report, she still couldn't shake loose any suspects. She had no leads… the trail was cold.

Cold… like the way things were between her and Logan lately. She had seen this side of him before, it was the one that he had turned on her after Lilly had died and he blamed Veronica for it. She had honestly hoped it had gone for good after they had reconnected following his mothers suicide. The loss of him from her life felt like she had lost something vital… part of her was mourning for him. She still couldn't understand how he could claim to care about her and then flip the switch and become a total jackass who hated her existence. If she was truthful… he frightened her.

That night in her apartment, she had hoped he would open up to her… that they could talk things out, salvage their friendship at least, but he had turned angry, broken a lamp and began to yell at her and for a few moments, all she could see was his fathers. She had been shaking for about an hour after her dad had kicked him out of the apartment… and he hadn't even apologized.

He hadn't reached out to her at all and she had spent most nights waiting by the phone hoping he would call her or come by her work.

Duncan had been a welcome distraction, like pulling on a favorite sweater or PJs after everything she had been through… but his eyes were still too blue. His shoulders were a little too broad.. and the conversation just didn't have that same spark. He was like comfort food but the relationship was bland.

The only trouble with going to high school with your ex… is everyday.. there they are.

She had never thought that she would miss Logan so much, but he had moved on, his defences were up and he wouldn't talk to her except to either intimidate or hurl barbs at her. Duncan made her feel safe, she could wrap herself up in the idea of being normal again, she could put on the girlfriend smile like a brilliant make up disguise… for a while at least. Maybe the sex would get better with time? She thought as she crept out of the room… and then, there he was. A dark green t-shirt on, his hair messy and a little lipstick on his neck. Brown eyes narrowing at her in frustration.

Logan Echolls… the boy who had broken her heart.

He had refused to let everything get back to normal… he was causing a war between the 09ers and the PCH biker gang and after that shot gun blast through the windshield when he had _lied_ to her about setting the community pool on fire, she knew she had to do something. He was with her in every way but the one that mattered.. he didn't trust her to help him. To have his back.. It had stung. Someone was going to get killed… she could have to watch him get killed.. and she just couldn't watch anymore.

 _He had been with someone else…_ the thought crushed a part of her she was trying to silence.

Of course he had. She knew his reputation as a player from long before they had been dating.. but she hadn't heard about anyone recently. Did he even care that she might miss him? He obviously disapproved of her and Duncan, but Logan had always been possessive. Lilly had told her as much. She was sure he just wished that she would just disappear and allow him to have his wing man back.

"hmmm.. theres something different about you" he mocked.

Her flushed cheeks and messy hair were a dead giveaway of what had just happened with Duncan. She was mortified… why did he have to be here? Wasn't it enough that she had spent most of the last few hours wishing it had been him instead of Duncan?

"Did you cut your hair or something?" he snarled coldly.

 _He was being such a bastard…_ surely he should know how big a step this had been for a girl who had spent so long thinking she had been raped?

"FYI… if the cuddling was the best part… he didn't do it right" he spewed at her as he tied his lace. Veronica was doing her best to fight back the tears or the urge to slap him. Part of her was still in shock… who was in that room? He was so achingly close to her… for the first time in so long…

He gave her a strange look, unreadable and then turned and walked away towards the Neptune Grand Elevator. She tried not to but she pulled up her phone and dialled hotel reception.

"Room 1147 please.." she asked.

"Hello?" answered a sultry womans voice that she didn't recognise but before she could get more information she heard the door beside her open.

"Hey…. Why didn't you wake me?" Duncan asked dreamily.

"Uh… because I have about 5 seconds before my dad activates the homing becon he installed in my molar" she quipped guiltily.

Duncan kissed her and gave her a little hug and she turned to go to the Elevator… at least Logan was gone by now. She wasn't sure she could cope with him seeing her cry. She maintained that happy smile on her face until the door had closed and cursed as the receptionist informed her that the occupant of room 1147 had now checked out.

She was with Duncan… what should it still matter to her what or who Logan was doing…? Or that if she was really honest with herself….she wished that someone had been her?


End file.
